Assessing child-abuse reports a complex challenge

NEW YORK — The calls, reporting suspicions of child abuse andneglect, come in at a rate of nearly 10,000 a day, to hotlines andlaw-enforcement offices across the country.

They add up to 3.4 million reports per year — a dauntingchallenge for state child protection agencies, which must sort out the flimsyor trivial claims from the credible and potentially dire ones, and makedecisions that balance the rights of parents with the welfare of children. Manystates, after initial screening, deem more than half the reports they receiveto be unworthy of further investigation.

"In child protection, you are always walking a difficultline," said Cindy Walcott, deputy commissioner of Vermont's Department forChildren and Families.

"Obviously you want to protect children from harm, but youdon't want to intervene in the private life of a family when it's notindicated," she said. "Those decisions need to be made carefully, soyou're getting it right as often as possible."

The issue of child-abuse reporting burst into the spotlight lastweek with news that Arizona's Child Protective Services failed to look intoabout 6,000 reports of suspected child maltreatment that had been phoned in toits abuse hotline in recent years. At least 125 cases already have beenidentified in which children were later alleged to have been abused.

Other states have had problems with their processing of abusereports. Florida's Department of Children and Families, for example, overhauledits abuse hotline last year after flaws were discovered with how informationwas collected and relayed to investigators.

In general, however, advocacy groups and academic experts creditchild-protection agencies and their workers with trying their best, underoften-challenging circumstances.

"Child protection workers are very valuable to ourcountry," said Jim Hmurovich, president of the Chicago-based advocacygroup Prevent Child Abuse America and former director of Indiana's Division ofFamily and Children. "They often have to make determinations with limitedinformation, and they care a lot."

Nationally, the standard practice is to vet all the calls comingin to the hotlines. Yet as that is done, federal data show that about 40percent are soon "screened out" — judged not to warrant furtherintervention or investigation. Among the reasons: The alleged maltreatmentmight be deemed innocuous, or the caller may fail to provide enough details forthe agency to pursue.

Of the 3.4 million reports received for the 2011 fiscal year,about 2 million — or 60 percent — were "screened in" to trigger somedegree of state intervention, according to the latest federal figures. Of thosecases, 680,000 ended up being substantiated as incidents of neglect and abuse.

Even at that stage, there are options. The child-protectionagency may open a formal child-abuse investigation or, in a less drastic step,it may assign social workers to assess a given family's circumstances and offercounseling, support services or other intervention. Minnesota is at theforefront of a group of states pursuing this strategy, known as"differential response."

"It is hard work," said Erin Sullivan Sutton,Minnesota's assistant commissioner for children and family services. "Oneof the challenges is being able to distinguish where people are doing horriblethings to children and those situations where a mom or dad are trying to begood parents but lack the resources to do so."

Minnesota screens in only about a third of all the reportsreceived through a statewide network of county and tribal hotlines — well underthe national rate of 60 percent. But Sullivan Sutton says voluntary socialservices are offered to some of the families who figure in the cases thataren't going to be subjected to a formal abuse investigation.

"We care as much about the families who are screened out asthose who are screened in," she said.

Vermont, like Minnesota, screens in only about 30 percent of thereports phoned in to its statewide hotline. In 2011, there were 15,256 reportsand 4,911 of them were accepted for state intervention — either a child abuseinvestigation or a less draconian assessment.

Overall, experts say it's difficult to assess how good a job thestate agencies are doing with their screening of abuse reports — in partbecause variances in laws and practices make precise state-to-state comparisonsalmost impossible. Even the basic definitions of child maltreatment vary.

"We don't have a lot of information about the cases thatare screened out, so it's hard to say if a good decision was made," saidJohn Fluke, an expert on child maltreatment at University of Colorado School ofMedicine.

Vermont did undertake a detailed assessment of its abusereporting system in 2012. It concluded that its decisions on screening in werehighly accurate but found fault with 22 percent of the decisions to screen out,generally on grounds that those decisions were made without gathering enoughinformation about the case.

According to the federal data, the total number of reports ofsuspected maltreatment rose from 3.1 million in 2007 to 3.4 million in 2011.The number of confirmed cases of abuse or neglect declined over that period,from 723,000 to 681,000, at a time when many state child-protection agencieswere experiencing tight budgets and heavy caseloads.

Virtually every state has laws outlining who is required toreport instances of suspected child maltreatment. Most states designate certainprofessions — notably law enforcement personnel, social workers, teachers andother school personnel, doctors and other health care workers, and child-careproviders. However, 18 states have laws requiring any person who suspects childabuse to make a report.

Sociologist David Finkelhor, director of the University of NewHampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center, said some members of thepublic may make calls that are far too vague for an agency to pursue.